Travis (2010)
Contents
Source Details
| Travis (2010) | |
| Title: | Estimating the economic impact of mass digitization projects on copyright holders: Evidence from the Google Book search litigation. |
| Author(s): | Travis, H. |
| Year: | 2010 |
| Citation: | Travis, H., 2010. Estimating the economic impact of mass digitization projects on copyright holders: Evidence from the Google Book search litigation. Journal of the Copyright Society of the USA, 57, pp.41-62. |
| Link(s): | Definitive , Open Access |
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| Literature review?: | No |
| Government or policy study?: | No |
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Abstract
"Google Book Search (GBS) has captured the attention of many commentators and government officials, but even as they vigorously debate its legality, few of them have marshaled new facts to estimate its likely effects on publishing and other information markets. This Article challenges the conventional wisdom propounded by the U.S. and German governments, as well as Microsoft and other competitors of Google, concerning the likely economic impact of mass book-digitization projects. Originally advanced by publishing industry lobbying groups, the prevailing account of mass book-digitization projects is that they will devastate authors and publishers, just as Napster and its heirs have supposedly devastated musicians and music labels. Using the impact of GBS on the revenues and operating incomes of U.S. publishers believing themselves to be the most-affected by it, this Article finds no evidence of a negative impact upon them. To the contrary, it provides some evidence of a positive impact, and proposes further empirical research to identify the mechanisms of digitization’s economic impact.
The debate surrounding the GBS settlement is important to students, writers, researchers, and the general public, as it may decide whether a federal appellate court or even the U.S. Supreme Court allows the best research tool ever designed to survive. If the theory of Microsoft and some publishing trade associations is accepted, the courts may enjoin and destroy GBS, just as Napster was shut down a decade ago.
The Article aims at a preliminary estimate of the economic impact of mass digitization projects, using GBS as a case in point. It finds little support for the much-discussed hypothesis of the Association of American Publishers and Google’s competitors that the mass digitization of major U.S. libraries will reduce the revenues and profits of the most-affected publishers. In fact, the revenues and profits of the publishers who believe themselves to be most aggrieved by GBS, as measured by their willingness to file suit against Google for copyright infringement, increased at a faster rate after the project began, as compared to before its commencement. The rate of growth by publishers most affected by GBS is greater than the growth of the overall U.S. economy or of retail sales. Thus, the very publishers that have sued Google have seen their revenues grow faster than retail sales or the U.S. economy as a whole (measured by gross domestic product). This finding parallels some of the research that has been done since the Napster case on the economic impact of peer-to-peer file sharing on sales of recorded music. Future studies may provide a more granular estimate of the economic impact of frequent downloads or displays of pages of particular books on the sales of such books."
Main Results of the Study
The article aims at a preliminary estimate of the economic impact of mass digitization projects, using GBS as a case in point. It finds little support for the much-discussed hypothesis of the Association of American Publishers and Google’s competitors that the mass digitization of major U.S. libraries will reduce the revenues and profits of the most-affected publishers. In fact, the revenues and profits of the publishers who believe themselves to be most aggrieved by GBS, as measured by their willingness to file suit against Google for copyright infringement, increased at a faster rate after the project began, as compared to before its commencement.The rate of growth by publishers most affected by GBS is greater than the growth of the overall U.S. economy or of retail sales. Thus, the very publishers that have sued Google have seen their revenues grow faster than retail sales or the U.S. economy as a whole (measured by gross domesticproduct). This finding parallels some of the research that has been done since the Napster case on the economic impact of peer-to-peer file sharing on sales of recorded music. Future studies may provide a more granular estimate of the economic impact of frequent downloads or displays ofpages of particular books on the sales of such books.
Policy Implications as Stated By Author
Leaders within the publishing industry have often claimed that computers, digitization, and “Napsterization” represent serious threats to their revenues and the livelihoods of their authors. If the Napster analogy isaccepted, the tendency of the courts and Congress may be to treat computer users, search engines, massively multiplayer online role playing games, digital libraries, and bloggers quoting news stories as infringing,and shut them down or revamp them with publishing industry control over their features, limitations, and level of interactivity. The data reviewed in this study indicates that the many costs of such an approach, including costs to economic innovation, freedom of expression, and personal privacy, need not be tolerated. The publishing industry may benefit from services like GBS, rather than being decimated.This study suggests that mass digitization may increase the strength, number, and diversity of publishing industry competitors. Publishers subjected to it on a massive scale have seen their revenues and profits soar. They are racing past the economy as a whole. One way in which mass digitization may impact the publishing industry beneficially is by vastly expanding public and competitor access to not only substantive knowledge in general, but knowledge about books, the book market, and book prices in particular. Rather than an hour-long trip to the bookstore to walk up and down aisles and check shelves for availability and both covers for pricing, GBS represents a portal to massive online bookstore, library, and public domain holdings. Unlike the books in a bookstore, GBS allows searching for specific words and concepts, and limitingthe results one sees by year of publication, author’s name, publisher, and other important criteria. GBS is also a far more convenient place than Amazon.com to compare published books to each other, to library holdings, to the Web, and to the public domain.
Coverage of Study
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